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Uncovered : Lenovo Service Center Upsell Scare Tactic

In my last post, I wrote about how a user sent her her laptop to Lenovo service center for faulty speakers but instead got a $1000 bill for faulty motherboard. However, before it was admitted to the service center, the laptop was found to be in working order in front of the customer service.

The good news is that the head of communications of Lenovo has picked up the blog post and is now in direct contact with the user to get the issue settled. Kudos to him.

The bad news is that an exchange of emails between this Lenovo service center and the user's techie husband has uncovered a deceitful sales tactics to upsell services that may not be needed by the users.

Wrote the user's husband,

"Let's just say that Lenovo seems to have an upsell policy. Apparently after my emails got angrier, they clarified that the mobo "likely to die" vs "died". So I said please send me email to detail which part likely to die, and how soon, so that maybe I can just save all the money anyway."

So a dead motherboard was suddenly resurrected to dying after an exchange of emails?

If the motherboard was declared dead earlier, what diagnostic tests or results showed that the motherboard has died?

Now that it is dying, the same questions apply?

Unfortunately, the fact that this user has experienced this means that such upsell sales tactics have been used before on users who are not that technically inclined and paid up just to get the lap fixed.

The laptop is four-five years old. Yes, the processor and motherboard is old, but under what conditions and diagnostic test results allowed the service center to declare the motherboard is dead or dying.

This Lenovo service center might be an outsourced service center, but it is still representing the Lenovo brand. As such, I would like for Lenovo to investigate this service center and stop such upsell services.

Whenever a user ask me about which brand of PC they should buy, the second question they will most likely ask is if that brand provide good service support?

Singapore will soon exempt local operators, Singapore Pools and Turf Club, from online gambling ban and the sites will be ready in November 2016.

Ministry of Home Affairs explained that a complete ban on remote gambling drives demand and activities
underground, and may create larger incentives for criminal syndicates to
target Singapore."

Yet in a 2012 survey by the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCG) found that those who gamble online have the poorest control.

Source: https://app.msf.gov.sg/Portals/0/Summary/research/EDGD/Gambling%20participation%20survey%202011.pdf
For those who indulged in online gambling, 30.4% said they gambled for a longer period than they planned to, 33.3% gambled with more money than they planned and 29.2% gambled more frequently they planned to.
Will launching the online gambling sites be like opening a Pandora Box that will create more issues in the future?